


From Afar

by darrenjolras



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, aka it follows the trajectory of the show so major character death is implied, basically i wanted to make things better but i think i just made them worse, i was so sure this was going to be a fix-it fic but fluff? don't know her
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-31
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-12-30 01:17:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18305222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darrenjolras/pseuds/darrenjolras
Summary: In theory, a look ought to do no harm.





	1. Jopson

**Author's Note:**

> Cannot believe that this is my first bit of Terror fic and it's not even about Hickey. Laura, this is your fault.

 

Thomas Jopson has always considered himself invisible.

He’s never minded it, to be fair. There is a measure of discretion required for the job, see - the ability to be here and there, removed but ready, at hand but ever unobtrusive. There is a slight distance in it, too, a state of separation from the rest of the crew. He waits on the captain, serves the officers, mingles with the men, treads the same decks, but never quite _fits_ , never finds a true anchor among them. Not even the captain is that.

But he is fond of his job, and likes to be useful.

And being useful, of course, means not getting in the way: he’s known _that_ since he was a boy. Still fails at it spectacularly from time to time, though, as evidenced by today’s dash to the captain’s storeroom, before the captain can return to find his cabin utterly depleted of whiskey, which of course is the most unacceptable mark against any place, to Crozier’s mind. (Jopson doesn’t say this to think badly of the man. He knows better than to judge. But the captain, these days, needs no more nudging down the path of peevishness than he already gets from Fitzjames - the man’s presence seems, without exception, to provoke an allergic reaction in the captain - and without the whiskey to settle his temper, he’ll have someone’s head. Perhaps not Jopson’s, but Jopson has enough sympathy for the rest of the men aboard not to risk it.)  

It’s more of a store _cupboard_ , really - not unlike the rest of the rooms on _Terror_. So when Jopson ducks in, not thinking past the particulars of his errand, he slams into another man’s body with all the unwieldy force of a cannonball, colliding directly before either of them can help themselves.

Jopson can almost count himself grateful at the door’s swinging near-closed behind him, because the rift of light that now falls through the chink in the doorway must leave the flush on his cheeks obscured in shadow, though it cannot mask the identity of his victim.

Lieutenant Little, then.

The cans and bottles are still rattling on the shelf behind him in a precarious cacophony. Little has been forced backwards into the wall, the back of his head no doubt what caused that muffled _thunk_ against wood, the lieutenant having chosen to shield the bottles of liquor in his hands before himself.   

Of course it’s him, and of course he has, Jopson thinks deliriously. Crozier’s second is as pragmatic as they come, too collected for any such clumsiness on his own account - and far too sensible to waste any of their stores on it, never mind the captain’s. He probably tallies up the ship’s supplies in his sleep.

If he also has the uncanny ability to make something in Jopson’s stomach leap just at seeing him, he is almost certainly oblivious to it.

Small mercies.

At first it was only the handsomeness. All the lieutenants on this expedition are strikingly so - oh, it’s in the job of steward to be observant, and how is he to attend to anyone if he doesn’t _look_? - but Lieutenant Little might be the one most overlooked by the world. He is quieter than the rest, see, so restrained he can seem austere, stiff and diffident in his ways. But it is half his aloofness that is the maddening part, that Jopson wishes he could shave away and see beneath: to mark his wit, to hear him talk, to see him smile.

If he has fantasies beyond those, they remain neatly stored away, most of the time. Unbidden urges to run his fingers through his hair... never mind the heat that stirs, sometimes, at the base of his gut, yearning unleashed from its tight coil. If his insides are tied in knots, however, they are still no match for what has become of his tongue: a matter never helped by the way his mind goes blank at seeing him, how his thoughts of common sense suddenly refuse to thaw.

Conscious that the closeness of being packed in together like this, almost chest to chest, will do no good to _that_ end, Jopson lurches backwards in apology.

Lieutenant Little might have forgotten to breathe. From the shock, Thomas supposes. He ought not to disrupt him so. The effects of being startled are becoming plain in Little’s arms, because the bottles he is in the midst of sorting seem perilously placed, like they might drop, one after the next, into a shattered sea of glass on the floorboards.

Unthinking, he presses his hand to the lieutenant’s arm to steady him. Little flinches, one of the bottles slipping a fraction further in his grasp. Jopson holds on a little firmer, for the bottles’ sakes.   

“It’s all right,” Thomas says, with a breathless laugh, a bit of a grin. “I don’t bite.”

It seems the joke - admittedly not his best - is an ill-advised tactic (and he should have known it well enough, for Lieutenant Little has always seemed innately immune to humour), because the lieutenant only stares at him. It is something like disbelief.

Jopson’s grin suddenly feels more like a grimace. Belatedly - dear God, hasn’t he moved yet? - his hand drops to his side, freeing Little from the contact. He was deluded, then: Little has the bottles held fast. “Sorry, sir. I’ll see that I’m out of your way.”

Little’s mouth twitches as though he is about to speak.

But he doesn’t. All he does is clear his throat, nod curtly, and turn towards what’s left of the liquor before Jopson can even manage to barrel out of the storeroom, reaching across to snatch another bottle of whiskey and hastening away down the passageway, left to ferment in his own stupidity.

 

Embarrassment proves a potent antidote to any measure of temptation. For the next few weeks thenceforth, Jopson refrains from so much as glancing at Lieutenant Little whenever he is obliged to set out the plates and serve the drinks at the officers’ dinners on _Terror_. 

This strategy backfires splendidly, in the end, as all Jopson’s attempts at self-control are wont to do, because... well, they cannot all be so disciplined in life, so doggedly bound to order, as some. (He knows who he means. Leave him be.)

And he has already caught himself out in his own distraction, because it is a rare enough occasion upon which he cannot attend to his duties and also continue to pay full attention to the matters of discussion at the table, an occupation once begun unconsciously but now more frequently borne out of the wish to be capable of reciting such things back to the captain, should he require any prompting later. Today Jopson has utterly no sense of the past quarter of an hour’s discussion, but it is not until his eyes flicker across to the lieutenant that he realises the severity of his affliction. He is caught there, in spite of himself, bound by the constraints of Lieutenant’s Little gaze.

Only - the lieutenant has been looking at him. _Is_ looking at him still. An absurd notion though it might be (Jopson would _know_ if he were standing spilling gravy down his front or something else foolish, something to cleave himself from the background of the room and deserve the attention), the more he looks, the less he can refute it. The lieutenant’s head is turned entire, chin angled away from the table’s conversation; his gaze is too deliberate to dismiss. Jopson feels a shiver tumble up his spine.

In theory, a look ought to do no harm.

And for a lingering moment, Little doesn’t even seem to register that Jopson is looking back. Before he can realise the opportunity to escape undiscovered, however, to tuck away this small secret for himself, Little wakes to the reciprocated gaze. Thomas can see the moment it sinks in all too plainly. A furrow blooms on Little’s brow above the downturned corner of a frown, his mouth forming the fraught line it so often does, and something in his look has hardened, something less habitual: his shoulders are stiffened, his stare suddenly dark as obsidian.

Little being Little, there is something unfathomable in it. Jopson can’t even delineate for certain whether it is supposed to be disapproval or discomfort - or worse still, some deep expression of dislike.

Jopson lowers his eyes in a gesture of surrender, and continues clearing the plates.       

 

“How is he?” A voice cuts cleanly through the quiet.

Jopson is so used to the groans of the ice by now that such uproar cannot faze him, and so it is quiet here, just him and the sheets he is folding.

But he pauses and looks up, disconcerted to see Lieutenant Little in the doorway.

The question has its perils, too. How can he say how the captain is? Crozier has been in a bad way for a long while, the crumbling of the earth gradual under his feet. His temper began to chip away months ago. The stormclouds gathered, and he and Little and everyone could see the signs. So this is better, or so it ought to be - but in Crozier choosing to turn and face his demons, he is in worse anguish than any of them can fathom, worse turmoil even than _Terror_ herself as she is throttled slowly in the ice.

How can he say how the captain is, when he has retched already three times today and soiled his sheets as often as a child? When he is drowned in sweat and cannot move for shaking? How can he say he doesn’t know? And better still, how can Thomas say that he will get through it, when he nursed his mother the same and saw her diminished by every gain she made? Sometimes, he ought to remember, it is a losing fight.

He smooths out a crease, painstaking.

“Doing bravely, sir,” he returns. “Well enough, under the circumstances.”

The air is rife with worry, all the same. Only the two of them, and they have already filled the room with their fears.

Jopson tries to quell it with more assurance. “Nothing I can’t handle, sir.”

He won’t be able to think of anything else until it is over.

“Nevertheless,” Little says - with an air of uncertainty, if anything - “you will call on me, I hope? If there is anything I can do.”

“Of course, sir,” Jopson says, although he can’t picture the lieutenant being of much use in these matters. Still, Lieutenant Little is hovering anxiously, earnestness in his eyes and his brows knitted so strongly that it takes a world of willpower to resist the urge to step up and smooth out the creases in his forehead next.

Instead, Jopson adds the sheet to the pile and just offers him a simple nod, the brief quirk of a smile. “You’ve already enough on your plate, sir, as his proxy.” It is a role that suits Little, he observes again; command seems a natural fit on his shoulders, one which gives all his competences and correctness room to breathe. The captain has no sound reason to worry about _Terror_ in his indisposition, and although the lieutenant perhaps can’t see it, Jopson is sure that that is help enough. “But you can be sure I will.”

This exchange - and all its subtle variations - becomes a familiar tune over the next few days, with Little no less anxious for the captain’s troubles, and Jopson privately rather glad to know he is not alone in his constant fretting for him. There is less accusation in the lieutenant’s eyes now, when they share a glance, accidentally brush arms in the passageway or hands against the tea-tray; now Jopson might go so far as to call it camaraderie... although if these innocent exchanges once or twice inspire more in him than they should, he will at least confess to being appropriately guilty for his faults. And thoughts are only thoughts. They, at least, must be invisible - even if he isn’t, quite.

 

Comfort cannot last. Instead, Carnivale comes, and tragedy flares up stark and bright.

And now the ship feels like a cemetery of deadened things. A sea of ghosts walking the boards, everything startled from a long sleep into motion, a wooden whirlwind of shifting crates and tarpaulins and stacked cans, the men a trail of ants skittering to and fro from their about-to-be-abandoned colony.

Jopson feels more solid than most of them, though can’t say why for certain. After all, he feels the same scorching fear of the flames that is echoed in every man’s eyes, dread and panic licking up through his bones. He knows how much, how many, they have already lost, feels that heartsickness, and yet -

Maybe it is because the captain is back. Restored to his old self. More resolved and alive than he was before, even. And if the captain can return from the abyss he just has, can thwart all craving and human weakness with nothing more than grim persistence - well, what are a few hundred miles and a pack of ice? A little hunger in their stomachs, a little illness in their veins? Crozier can guide them through it, make no mistake. Jopson has spent the best part of his time at sea at the captain’s side, taking the measure of him. He doesn’t have a wealth of certainties in his mind - isn’t sure what to say of God these days, doesn’t know that he much believes in destiny, can barely remember the place he once called home - but some truths burn keenly, still, in his gut. They must keep calm. Make the captain proud; trust in his commitment to his men. These are the safest hands they could hope for to lead them out. If there is a man on earth to do it, it is the Captain.

What more comfort could the men need than that?

  
More than he has imagined, Jopson discovers, the night before the first party is to leave, to set up camp on King William Land.  

Crozier and Fitzjames are occupied up on deck, so he looks up when he hears the creaking sound of footsteps at the door.  

“Lieutenant?” He says, without thinking; and it is Lieutenant Little, he can tell it by the man’s hair and the wornness of his gloves and the very cadence of his step. But Little does not stop, just strides on past, his head bowed.

Jopson feels a pang of disappointment at being ignored. Still, it is not long before concern overwhelms that petulance, and, forgetting the stack of cutlery to be polished and socks to be darned and belongings to be packed in the captain's quarters, he treads lightly after the lieutenant.

The door to his cabin is sliding closed just as Jopson reaches it, wondering. He knocks at the door and waits, polite. Nothing. Nothing but the heavy sound of breathing.

“Lieutenant?” He tries again. He should leave him be without orders to be here; Little will think it is something important. But something feels wrong. Something in Little’s expression, in the way he refused to look up. It’s daft, Jopson knows: daft, to think he can see anything, to think he might make any difference.

“Who is it?” The lieutenant’s voice carries through the door with an odd thickness.

“Jopson, sir,” Thomas says, inclining his head sideways to the door. “Just me, and I only wondered if -”

The door slides open.

“- if... there was anything you required?”

Lieutenant Little looks... defeated, more than anything else. There is a wearied set to his shoulders, and his eyes are unusually red-rimmed, in a way that isn’t just burnt from the ice. He averts his eyes, and manages only to shake his head in answer.

Jopson feels a tearing sympathy in his gut, and opens his mouth in spite of having not the faintest idea what to say.

Little’s hand is gripped about the door like a vice, as though he is clinging onto it for dear life. He expects the lieutenant will drag it shut any moment now, but instead Little steps backwards from the doorway - a gesture Jopson reads as an invitation, or perhaps a plea. Gingerly, he steps into the officer’s cabin and lets the door slide back, stands and watches as Little sinks down onto his bunk and stares into phantom space.

His eyes are affixed to the muscle tensed in Little’s jaw when he finally finds a few words. “It helps to tell it, sometimes, sir. To speak what you are feeling.”

Lieutenant Little makes a desperate choking sound. “I can’t,” he whispers. “Jopson, I can’t.”

“It’s all right,” Jopson offers, although he doesn’t expect Little will believe him.

“No,” Little answers hoarsely. “It only gets worse from here. Worse for us all - all of us that are left.”

“No one expected the discovery service to be a picnic,” Jopson points out, gently enough. It doesn’t have the cheering effect he had hoped; his wry smile falters at the lieutenant’s response.

“And how many imagined it a death sentence?”

He can’t answer that.

“Fitzjames agreed, you know,” Little continues, “before Carnivale. That in fact Crozier had been right all along. Back when he warned Franklin - but no one listened. No one acted. Now that is all I can hear in my head at every moment, Crozier and his future of live men or dead men.”

“Still. Everyone aboard is listening, will heed him now. We’re walking out now.”

“You don’t think it is too late? That we might never see the ships or England again?”

“I don’t.” Jopson thinks of Crozier again. “It may be worse before it gets better. But it will get better.”

Little expels a loaded sigh, his eyes flickering upwards in doubt. “And how am I to lead the first party out, when I’m as lost as the rest of them?”

 _Don’t you know by now how the men trust you?_ Jopson thinks, how steady and sure he seems to them all. “What you need is some rest,” he tells him instead, weeks of tending to the captain sparing him from the self-rebuke of issuing unsolicited advice to his betters. “A night of sleep before you set off. Things will look up from the other side, sir. I promise.”

“But how could anyone sleep?” Little whispers, his expression contorted. “After - after -”

Jopson stills him by pressing a hand to his face, running his thumb over Little’s cheekbone, across the place where the tear-tracks are thinly glistening. It is a movement that lacks the hesitation it ought; a movement Jopson thus repeats, the rhythm of this caress becoming yet more resolute with every moment the lieutenant doesn’t protest it.

Eventually this draws Lieutenant Little upwards from his bunk, swaying somewhat unsteadily on his feet. Jopson pauses as Little’s fingers reach up to pull his hand down from his face - and he is about to step away obediently, going to knot his hands now behind his back, when Little throws his arms about his shoulders and pulls him in instead. Little’s hands find fistfuls of his clothes and his head finds Jopson’s shoulder, folding into his warmth without a word. It is only half a moment before Jopson clings back with the same fervour, buries his face in Little’s hair.  

“Shh,” Jopson says, in a soothing breath. Every man needs some reassurance in his life; why should Lieutenant Little be any exception? And why should he be surprised? “We’ll be just fine. I promise we will.”

They’ve seen horrors enough.

 

“Thank you,” Little murmurs later, when sleep’s drowsy softness is settling over him like snow, the powder-white, feather-light snowfall of a English winter. Jopson feels encased, somehow, in that softness too: so much so, that when the lieutenant says, _will you stay?_ he forgets to fight the answer.

“I’ll stay.”

Little hums at that, a quiet sound of approval that Jopson is almost sure he imagines... but he stays, all the same, perched on a stool beside the lieutenant’s bunk, his back against the wall and his head turned sidelong to the bed.

Jopson feels, suddenly, the way he always does: present, invisible. The lieutenant falls asleep beside him. He can’t sleep here - but he can’t go.

Out of nowhere, he hears the captain’s words again, searing in his ears. _Close is nothing._

They’ve never been so close as this, he and Little. The quiet and smallness of the cabin amplifies the feeling, swelling the space with a peaceful, unbearable intimacy.

Nor has he ever seen Little look so at ease. He is almost a stranger in sleep from the man witnessed just before. Besides his chest’s gentle rise and fall, all Jopson can make out is only the faintest furrow on his brow.

_Worse than nothing._

And the lieutenant’s hand is only inches from his knee, resting on the covers with his palm upturned. His fingers are relaxed but curling upwards to cradle thin air. A natural hollow, as if Jopson’s hand had any right to fill that space; Little beckoning him unconsciously, as if he might thread their fingers together and find a new home there.

His mouth is dry and his hands are numb with want, and want is somehow worse than the three years’ worth of pins-and-needles from the cold.

He is glad if he could offer the lieutenant some comfort. But - and it is something about this painful closeness that sees Jopson realise it anew - he is so lonely, so alone, that he doesn’t know if any amount of comfort is enough for him. It is something more than comfort, the thing he needs.

The air is stung with that confession, and the scent of Little’s hair.

_Worse than anything in the world._

He can feel the sigh rising. Jopson buries it deep between his ribs, and leans back to rest his head heavily against the bulkhead.

 


	2. Little

This time when Lieutenant Little looks over his shoulder, the ships are gone. Out of sight at last. They have been diminished by the white with every glance he has cast behind him, squinting harder and harder from across the pack as they are smudged away to nothing. So he and the men with him are untethered now, truly, from everything and everywhere they have known. Whatever hopes he has for a way out, he is sure they will never see _Erebus_ or _Terror_ again.

He swallows and turns onwards again, encouraging the men at a steady pace. They are exposed out here, he knows, things he doesn’t understand tracing a path around them somewhere, lurking at the corners of their consciousness.

But they don’t see the creature. And his hopes are more than they were yesterday, even if they are still only seeds today. He slept well, in the end, and supposes he must feel better for it, as Jopson said.

Maybe he only feels relieved to be moving, some - however slow and painful - physical progress the best way to keep his mind at bay.

Jopson was still there, when Edward woke this morning. Dozing on the chair, slack-jawed, that strand of hair falling in front of his face the way it always wants to. For once, Jopson isn’t awake to brush it back.

(He might have woken him to thank him, if he’d only had the courage. Instead, he carries the image all day as he hauls, lets it strike up a little warmth in him, a little more hope.)

 

They make it to land. And so do the rest eventually, along with the captain: Little feels the tension unfurl in his chest to know it, to know that they are at last on firmer ground. Nothing can shake that.

Not even Morfin, begging to be shot.

He is trudging back to his tent when he passes Jopson, rooted to the ground, his expression pale and vacant. The losses do not get any easier. He halts briefly, waits patiently to catch the man’s eye in the moonlight, casts him a quiet look. Edward cannot think of anything of use to say, here; he could parrot back the words the steward offered him before, but all those promises would taste foreign in his mouth, would be an ashen imitation. It is easier to believe things, somehow, when Jopson says them. Little does not have that same ability.

But he wants to be a comfort, wants to return that favour, the kindness he’s been given - so he stops and presses his hand to Jopson’s shoulder, conscious of how he found that shoulder once before (how he laid his head on it, tucked his chin there like a child).

Maybe it is bolstering. Maybe it is not. Edward lets his hand slide down towards Jopson’s forearm; his fingers fall before they make it any further.

“Goodnight,” he murmurs as he goes. An empty tent awaits.

 

The next morning brings a lightness, the likes of which they have all almost forgotten. For a moment the captain’s tent is illuminated by laughter and cheer. Edward takes his turn to shake the hand of the expedition’s newest lieutenant.

And if he also takes the opportunity to duck into Jopson’s tent before the hunting parties set off, his excuse is that a handshake was not congratulations enough.

Jopson is in the midst of re-layering his uniform, his slops laid out for his next layer, when Little offers another echo of congratulations.

Jopson pauses in his endeavour to look up, his face flushed. “Thank you, sir.”

“Lieutenant,” Little says, his manner reproachful but his eyes full of mirth, “there’s no need to call me sir.”

“Old habits,” Jopson returns weakly. He picks at one of his buttons, avoiding Edward’s gaze, his tone growing suddenly conversational as if he is desperate to fill the silence. “I never dreamt of such a thing. Never had any great ambitions, I confess it, not even as a boy.”

(Funny, that. Edward Little, the boy, always dreamt of the day he’d prove a hero. Edward Little, the man, looks back at that and shakes his head in fond despair.)

What did Jopson dream of, then? He yearns to ask. Longs to know.

“Don’t know that I’ll make much of a Lieutenant,” Jopson concludes, talking almost to himself. His jaunty manner is almost jagged in its brightness, a dagger pointed upon himself.

“The captain would not appoint you if he did not believe in you,” Little assures him, stepping closer. “We all believe in you. I believe in you.”

He knows he shouldn’t, knows every word and every movement here is a risk, a chance that he might give himself away - but sometimes even he cannot be held back by self-restraint. “In fact,” he says, tugging lightly at Jopson’s lapels to straighten his collar and brushing a hand to smooth his coat, “there’s not a more deserving man in the Arctic.”

“That’s very kind of you, sir,” Jopson begins, and Little can hear a tongue in his cheek as he adds, “although I don’t know that the Arctic is an area much known for its population -”

 _I meant on the expedition, you fool_. “There’s not a single more deserving man in Britain,” he says instead, in husky seriousness, hoping this amendment cows him. “Or on earth, if you prefer.”  

It does have some effect.

Jopson now is even rosier than before, the flush creeping to his ears. “Well, thank you, sir.”

Edward raises a pointed eyebrow, and waits expectantly.

“Thank you.” It is Jopson’s turn to correct himself, leaving off the last syllable; something rollicks in Little’s soul to hear it, this version of the sentence lingering, open-ended, leaving new routes and nerves exposed. The silence is so inviting. It is something almost conspiratorial.

Edward has only just begun imagining all the ways to fill it, but Jopson gets there first, and does so with words, bittersweet words.

“Perhaps one day you would be my captain, and I your lieutenant,” Jopson says, the thought as wistful as it is teasing, reality surging in. Little knows it is a picture of another future, another parallel life: everything is another life now. They have nothing but the shingle beneath their feet, a whole horizon of it. (They have lived through so many visions of apocalypse already: catastrophes of godforsaken ice and hail and fire. But the real oblivion is here and now, in this brittle landscape, in this endless emptiness. There will be shingle at the end of the world.)

“Or just your steward,” Jopson adds, without pretension.

 _Perhaps_ , he could say, if there was any sense in living in such delusions. Besides - Edward bites his lip, seeking a way to safely phrase it - “I prefer us equals.”

He hopes Jopson can read him well enough to realise the full depth of what he means. He hopes -

“I suppose I could get used to that.” Thomas Jopson says, and beams at him.

Beams at him with a mouth full of blackened gums.

Edward smiles back: a soft, easy smile, all the capacity he has left to disguise the aching - tearing - in his chest. Jopson is spilling over with such warmth, and light, and tenderness, that Edward can do nothing in the world but smile. It is another delusion, but...

For one small moment, he is determined to pretend.

 

He pays for that moment. Is condemned, from there on, to make nothing but mistakes. Mistakes upon mistakes, errors of judgement and errors of thought and word and deed: what a fool he was, to ever think they were on firmer ground. Every step he takes upon the shingle is a false one.

The worst of it is what comes out of his mouth at the command meeting, Crozier and the officers huddled in a tent, Fitzjames taken too ill to attend. Jopson is there, has made plain the situation of their supplies. Encouraged by Le Vesconte’s nod, Edward is the one to pose an alternate plan, resigned to a pragmatism that sounds worse when said.

Jopson responds first, utterly incredulous, indignant. “We send out hunting parties every day. What you’re suggesting would be a death sentence for those men.”

Jopson is like Crozier, in this regard. Standing firm, a last bulwark of morality. Too much like Crozier, maybe. They are blinded by principle, and it may well be their virtue that sinks them all.

“Some, surely,” he says. “But not for all of us.”

He can feel Jopson’s stare on him, disbelieving and disappointed, even as the captain forgives it.

 

“I’m sorry,” Little tells him, marching after Jopson to his tent, determined to explain himself and gain forgiveness here, too. “It sounds a harsh measure. But this place is full of harshness, and we must be harsh too, if we want to survive. Half-measures will not help us any longer.”

“Then do it,” Jopson says, turning on him with a hardened gaze. “No half-measures. Just leave half of us behind.”

 _You were the one who told me to have hope_ , Edward thinks. _That things would get better_. “Not you,” he says. “I didn’t mean you.”

“I’m one of the ill,” Jopson answers, in biting defiance.

“You’ll be alright,” Edward protests, ignoring that Jopson’s hairline is peppered with dried blood.

“We are _all ill_ here. Who are you to decide who gets the chance to live?”

“Do you have a better plan, then? Has hope shown you any other option? Because I see no other way.”

Jopson stares at him, stung but suddenly weary. “I’m only glad you’re not our captain, Lieutenant.”

Little clenches his jaw. “I want us to live.”

“Go, then. I want you to live, too.” He is holding the tent-flap open, ready.

“Thomas, please.”

“Go, and see how you sleep then.”  


 

Fitzjames is dead.

Crozier has nothing to say at the funeral, if one can call it that. Desperately, Little seeks out the blue of Jopson’s eyes, but Jopson does not look his way.

Little is left to bury the body amongst the rocks.  

  


Jopson deteriorates quickly, after that.

Little falters in front of his tent a few times each day, trying to work up the courage to see him, and to, at least, apologise.

He waits and listens here again, his hand reaching out for the canvas.

Edward stops as the voices carry. Crozier is with him. He’ll wait a little longer, then.

(Besides, Jopson will not want to see him.)

  


By the time he ducks inside, he is worried he is already too late. Another mistake, then, to add to the mounting list. Jopson's skin is cracked, his breathing shallow, his eyes closed.

Edward waits to see whether he’ll wake.

Better if he doesn’t, perhaps, if it spares him some of the pain.

 

Eventually he has grappled with the silence for long enough, however, and swallows as he brushes the hair across Jopson’s forehead with his fingers.

“I love you,” he says, to the wind. “You cannot leave me.”

 _But you would leave me so easily,_ he almost hears Jopson reply, can almost feel the bite of understanding irony beneath the smile he would give even as he said it. Jopson is too good for him. They will never be equals, he knows. Edward would not deserve him, not in a hundred lifetimes.

“I don’t know what I will do, back in England,” he finds himself murmuring, instead. “If we did not end up on the same ship, again - I would miss you awfully, if we were apart. I suppose,” and he smiles to himself hopelessly, because Thomas Jopson would have better plans than that, wouldn’t look at him twice, back in the real world, “I would ask you to stay again.”

It is funny how fast and vividly a future blooms, from a head always so rigorously fine-tuned to sense. It is like he is back to his boyhood. But what have they left but dreams, out here? Dreams are light enough to carry.

Little allows himself to follow this lead. He is unused to talking like this.

(He is unused, perhaps, to talking.)

“Else I think I would find some way of setting myself up near you, wherever you chose to be. That way, you would serve as my compass, and I would make pilgrimages to you, to keep myself sane. Or we might live together. It is easy enough to excuse. None of us will want to be left alone. We could retire quietly to the country and never be disturbed, have a spring garden full of green. A stream that never freezes. But you’re from the city, aren’t you? I wouldn’t mind the city, if you’d rather. After this, to surround ourselves with people. We could take lodgings in London. I expect we could even afford Piccadilly, if _Terror_ is granted the medals she deserves. Bloomsbury, perhaps. Although the truth is I couldn’t care less where we are. Any four walls will be luxury after this. We might live in Lambeth, or the worst street in Southwark, or Marylebone or Bethnal Green...”

“Not Marylebone,” Jopson croaks, his eyes still closed. “Not Marylebone, I entreat you.”

Little lets out a shaky laugh, the fear in his chest flooding into momentary relief. There is no room for embarrassment amongst that feeling. “Not Marylebone, then,” he repeats, taking Jopson’s hand into his and cradling it fiercely.

“I’m sorry, Jopson,” he says. “You must know how sorry I am.”

Jopson smiles, just a fraction. “You _can_ call me Thomas, you know.”

 _I did once before_ , Edward thinks, but he obliges all the same. “I’m sorry, Thomas.”

Thomas’ lips twitch again, serenely. “Better.”

  


Things worsen, again. Jopson slips in and out of feverish consciousness while Crozier is captured by the mutineers. “I understand the order, sir,” Edward says, as their hope crumbles to ash yet again. “We will live.” He knows it is a lie as he breathes it.

He is blindsided, at the meeting. “He also ordered that we leave no man behind,” he objects, feeling an uncanny sense of deja vu, only this time he is on the other side of it. Indignation ripples through him, the burn of this betrayal. “You expediently leave that out.”

He would have argued it now, perhaps, even if it had not been entirely logical: Little knows their captain was their only real hope, and there is no chance of getting anywhere without him. But he has learnt his lesson, this time, and won’t let them leave the sick behind. Crozier would not. Jopson would not.

They would listen to Crozier. They would listen to Jopson, if Jopson were here - awake - lucid enough to fight this with him.

But they do not listen to him.

 _I will not go_ , he says, but they do not listen. The more resolute he is, the less they listen. _To hell with the captain’s orders_. _I will rescue the captain alone_ , he tells them. _I will stay with the sick_.

He is no captain. He cannot give an order.

  


They say they will not force any man to come, but what choice have they left him? He stays at Jopson’s side until the scrape of boat-hauling begins, voices carrying with his name, urging him to come.

He cups a hand at the back of Jopson’s neck, willing him to wake. Perhaps today he will be well enough to stand. Perhaps they will find a way back to each other. Perhaps they will still survive.

Edward leans over, presses his lips to Thomas’ forehead. His throat is as dry as the ground beneath their feet, too sapped of life to form the words he needs. He cannot bring himself to say goodbye.

  
The end of the world, he thought. Apocalypse. More the underworld, he thinks now, this region of chaos, and months-long darkness, and endless despair. Where souls are frozen. Of course _Terror_ and _Erebus_ made their homes here, amongst the dead and the dying and the dark. It is in their names.

And they that are left are fools, to think they can walk their way out of this wilderness. What gold will they use to cross the river? Who has crossed these straits or the Styx back again at all? Only Orpheus managed the latter - and Edward makes a poor Orpheus, without songs, without a voice to carry on.

But perhaps Jopson will be following them still, all the way out of hell.

Edward won’t look back, then. Just in case.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! 
> 
> I have to have a playlist for anything I write, so here, suffer through a Jopson/Little fanmix next if you like. [[Listen here]](https://open.spotify.com/user/orestesfasting/playlist/31XeVVOllcvTSqMTlTymu1?si=jSqLYbZdRdqPcDi7jt6vuw)


End file.
